A friend of mine recently was talking about the alphabet once having had 27 characters. You know how when you hear something new and it starts popping up around you? Yeah, that’s been happening, the topic of the 27th letter. The lowly ampersand also known as ‘and’.
So, being me, I did some purposeful looking up the subject of the 27 character alphabet and the ampersand. Here’s some things I learned about the alphabet:
- in the year 1011 there were 23 characters in the Old English alphabet: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z
- sometime in the 10th century 3 more letters were added J U W
- until 1835 the English alphabet consisted of 27 letters. Following the letter Z came & - the ampersand
- the & was a combination of the letters E and T. ET came from the Latin ‘and’ making the & pronounced as ‘and’
- some between 1835 and now the & disappeared and we have a 26 letter alphabet
The usage of et started in the 1st century which is when the ampersand came into being. It remained in use until sometime in the 19th century. It wasn’t an official act to remove it. People just seemed to stop using it.
In 1863 “The Dixie Primer, For the Little Folks” included the ampersand in the alphabet.
The character was then known as simply “and”. How the alphabet was recited led to the word “ampersand” coming into use. It was awkward reciting the last letters using “X Y Z and”.
The practice became to use “X Y and Z and, by itself and”. Over time even that became awkward leading to “and by itself” becoming “and per se, and”. As people over time started hurrying to say even that eventually the phrase turned into the word “ampersand”.
The alphabet song we are so familiar with was composed in 1835 and is sung to the tune of Mozart’s Twelve Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”. The awkwardness of trying to fit the 27th letter into the tune seemed to have a direct influence on the gradual disappearance of the letter from the alphabet.
The ampersand has remained in use as a symbol representing the word ‘and’. Generally it isn’t encourage in formal written language but it does have its uses.
- it can be part of an official name. For example my newsletter is Nicheless & Loving It. Or using two names within an official name like Scholar & Scribe
- informally as part of a descriptive clause where using only the word ‘and’ could lead to murky language — I love to have pancakes, bacon & eggs and biscuits & gravy for breakfast.
- informal replacement for the word ‘and’ when writing something quickly.
It can be fun finding out the history behind how our language and use of letters has evolved over the centuries.
Wonder what it will look like in another 100 years?
Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.
NOTE: unless otherwise stated, all images are the author’s
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Interesting, thanks for the education.
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There are a few other letters which dropped out of use over the years. My favourite (which I occasionally use when I'm writing by hand rather than typing) is Thorn, which represents the "Th" sound. It's quicker to write and with Th being so commonly used it makes sense to have a single character to represent it.
But it fell out of use with the invention of printing, because the typesets initially used were from the continent and didn't have the thorn character, so they substituted Y (which at the time was hardly ever used in English). Hence, when you see something along the lines of "Ye Olde...." pronounced with a Y sound it's wrong, it's still pronounced "The" just that they didn't have the thorn character in their typeface tray.
interesting additional information. Thank you for that.
Fascinating! well I had no idea that the 'Y' in old English was supposed to be pronounced as TH... ya learn something new every day. I just thought it was... you know... olde English !LOLZ Thanks for sharing this; it really complements to the article. !PIZZA
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You're forgetting thorn from old and middle English.
I can't be forgetting what I had no intention on writing about. The post is about the ampersand.
Oh wow. I didn't know the ampersand was really part of the alphabet at some point, and I actually had no clue about the origins of the word. That's really cool.
After reading this post, I was wondering about the origins of the French version of it, 'esperluette'. I checked on Wikipedia. The story is in fact similar to the English one.
Cheers!
PS: note that there is an 'INSERT image of primer' in the middle of your post. An image may be missing ;)
Interesting that the French version and the English are similar.
Yes, you are correct, there was a missing image. Thank you for the catch.
You are very welcome! Cheers!
I love reading your posts, @shadowspub! They are always so enlightening!
This is a great discovery, I can't wait to share this with my friends and colleagues. I use it most time because it represents 'and'. Wow 'ampersand'
Am shocked but glad to see this. I never knew anything like this happened. This is a great discovery and I will be glad to tell others about it with proof. I am reblogging this. Hahaha. Weldone
I knew ampersand used to be part of the alphabet, but couldn't have related the why's and whatnot's of the case. thanks
did you know the Scots alphabet also used to have another entire letter? Yogh. it looks a little like a 3 but written across the line in lower case.
Never knew about this until I read this post. Now I know what the origin of the & character. Thanks a bunch!
Fascinating! One of the most informative blogs I've read in ... awhile. Thanks!
Περίμενε... πότε πήραμε περισσότερα από 24 γράμματα στο αλφάβητο;
Wow, now I have a general idea about a 27th letter
Fabulous article, Shadows. I enjoyed this. Very informative... and the comment section is interesting too! I use the ampersand in Leo threads...cos they limit the characters count to 240 so it's nifty to be able to reduce it by using &.
At Uni I learned a few shorthand bits for taking notes which I still use today... for common words like with and the - it certainly makes it much quicker to write when we assign symbols to words, concepts and ideas... I guess the Egyptians, Chinese and Japanese... to name but a few... were on something!
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